Chapter 1200 – #283_Counterattack(3)
#1194
1.
Orselia Limos, the Witch of Proverbs.
No one denies her strength.
A 23rd-tier Great Witch who devours everything with the powerful familiars she harbors within her body.
An ancient witch who has lived for over a thousand years, her practical experience is beyond overflowing.
The cruelty and violence she displays as naturally as breathing are at a level that even her fellow public enemies find repulsive.
It would be great if a being of this caliber were to underestimate her enemies and be careless, or if she were a fool swayed only by instinct, but Orselia was a witch who was neither ‘careless’ nor a ‘fool’.
At Orselia’s feet, who had turned Helga, a member of Las Werphanas, into a pulp with a single blow, a thick purple magical power coalesced.
The moment Orselia kicked off the ground, her body flew towards her next target in a large arc, as if she had been shot from a cannon.
“Yahoo!!! I feel great!!!!”
Orselia’s eyes gleamed as she felt the fierce wind brushing past her ears.
As much as she wanted to rush to Shin Siwoo right away and taste his sweet flesh, the place she was heading was not towards Siwoo.
She intentionally bypassed Siwoo and the Black Knights, and was now heading towards the Gehenna lines, which were just reorganizing their ranks and surging in like a tide.
Every time she narrowed the distance and headed towards the front lines, it wasn’t just the Gehenna side that was in a state of panic.
Rather, the witches of Hexennacht were trying to leave the front lines even faster.
“Get out of the way!!! The Witch of Proverbs is coming!”
“Run away so you don’t get caught up in it!”
“W-wait a minute! We can’t retreat yet!”
“Run! Run! Run!”
The situation was quickly relayed to Siwoo as well.
[Godfather! The Witch of Proverbs is bypassing the center of our forces and heading towards the Gehenna side!]
“What?”
[Helga has been taken down.]
Siwoo and Werphanas’s wedge-shaped penetration of the Hexennacht Southern Legion was not only to help Gehenna’s counterattack.
It was to capture Orselia.
But Orselia herself had avoided Siwoo’s group and ran towards the Gehenna side.
Orselia’s power would be needed to stop Siwoo now.
Yet, she abandoned her role and avoided direct engagement.
One can’t help but think this.
Is she perhaps leaving this side to Erelim and planning to wreak havoc on the Gehenna camp?
“What about Erelim?”
[She hasn’t shown any movement yet. It’s speculated that she may have used a considerable amount of power in the process of blocking the shelling in the preliminary battle….]
This is troublesome.
Due to the numerous battles fought with witches, Orselia’s self-magic and its characteristics are quite well known.
One word to describe one of her characteristics would be this:
Contempt for the Weak.
The common belief that even the most powerful witch cannot withstand a mob attack does not apply to her.
This is because the ravenous beast ‘Erysichthon’ that Orselia harbors within her body devours witches and magic, digests them, and converts them into power.
Orselia, who has fallen into the heart of the enemy lines, is like a living typhoon that grows in size as she devours everything.
The moment she falls into the center of the Gehenna camp, a disaster will unfold.
They had set out to stop this from happening….
Was the plan too obvious?
[What should we do?]
“Let’s pursue her. Let’s secure a retreat route.”
[As you command.]
While Siwoo has to pull his body out of the deeply penetrated enemy lines, Orselia is quickly traversing the battlefield, jumping over the heads of her allies.
Even if he were to use the ‘First Enemy Creation: Decoy’ to switch places and pursue her, it would take about 3 minutes to safely evacuate even the goddaughters.
Siwoo clenched his teeth and chased after Orselia.
2.
The role given to Eloa was to lead the mobile unit, defeat the enemy’s Western Legion, and cut off the waist of the Southern Legion.
Although it was a mobile unit composed of the elite, the opponent was formidable.
Even though she expected it wouldn’t be easy, she didn’t expect it to take this long….
Verda’s goal was simply to hold Eloa back.
On the other hand, Eloa had to defeat her as quickly as possible and escape this forest.
At the seemingly distant goal, Eloa could only exhale a bitter breath.
“Aiya. Haven’t you changed your mind yet?”
Verda, who had summoned a huge forest and trapped Eloa, showed no signs of fatigue.
“I will contract.”
Conversation with an opponent to be cut down is unnecessary.
Following Eloa’s eyes, a pink magical reflection gleamed.
Eloa, who had gripped the sword hilt with such force that it made a creaking sound, leaped towards Verda with explosive momentum.
It was a speed that transcended thought.
It was an extreme speed at which even a witch who was quite skilled in combat would not even attempt to defend, but would only realize she had been attacked after being cut.
However, in the stretched-out time, Eloa saw it.
Verda’s eyes were clearly following the trajectory that Eloa was drawing.
-Bang!
An unbelievable roar echoed throughout the vast forest, as if flesh and flesh had collided.
Verda blocked Eloa’s powerful single slash with her slender forearm.
Despite receiving such momentum head-on, with her bare body, she didn’t even flinch, let alone show any signs of pain.
“Geez, we don’t have to fight like this.”
“……”
“Aren’t you going to say anything? A lack of communication only builds misunderstandings.”
Eloa immediately changed her attack path as soon as she realized her attack had been blocked.
A horizontal slash that crossed from the left waist area to the right chest.
“Geez! Listen to me!”
Just before her preparatory movement was complete, Eloa felt a chilling sense of danger and barely managed to pull her body away.
Verda’s cotton-like fist threw a cute uppercut.
If one were to look at the movement itself slowly, it was the uppercut of a clumsy person who had never exercised before.
However, the result was unrealistically absurd.
First of all, Eloa, who would not lose to anyone in close combat, barely managed to avoid Verda’s attack.
An explosion occurred at the tip of Verda’s fist that had passed through the air.
The shockwave originating from the epicenter shook the earth with a deafening roar.
“Tsk, tsk, annoying….”
Currently, Verda, who is grumbling, is not using any attack magic.
What caught Eloa’s attack was Verda’s ‘reaction speed’, what easily blocked Eloa’s slash was Verda’s ‘durability’, and the uppercut that caused the explosion just now was simply a swing of ‘brute force’.
“I don’t have the knack for controlling my power like you do. So, won’t you just get caught quietly?”
However, Verda’s reaction speed is faster than that of any other being in the world.
Her durability is comparable to that of Dorothy, who uses absolute power to the fullest.
Her brute force is a divine power that has packed the energy that can only be observed in a massive earthquake into her small body.
“……”
Eloa has defeated countless public enemies.
Even when facing magic with no information, she was able to guess the opponent’s self-magic by gathering clues such as visual cues and magic patterns.
In other words, she had already found the answer to the identity of the magic that Verda had shown.
Verda created the forest by offering all sorts of sacrifices.
This forest is giving Verda a concept.
If you ask what kind of concept it is, it is ‘life’, which is commonly used for physical recovery or enhancement.
The effect that Verda extracted from the concept of ‘life’ is ‘physical enhancement’.
Considering that she doesn’t use any other magic, it can be seen that she has dramatically increased the enhancement coefficient instead of restricting magic other than ‘physical enhancement’.
Through numerous sacrifices, Verda has obtained the ‘body of a god’.
The life force of the entire forest is condensed into Verda’s small body.
“Ah, to be able to become this strong without even rising in tier. I want to live like this forever.”
-Thud!
Verda moved.
If you were to look at it in slow motion, it was no different from that of a beginner.
However, for Verda, even a flying bullet would appear to be standing still, and if she were to sprint with all her might, the aftermath alone would be capable of large-scale destruction.
Overwhelming power and speed make technique meaningless.
Eloa also responded with a lightning-like movement.
-Thud!
Matching the timing of Verda’s clumsy hook, she accurately planted the tip of her foot in the space where Verda’s vision was blocked by her arm, creating a blind spot.
An attack imbued with the essence of explosive force accurately struck the ‘Daehyeong’, a vital point.
The Daehyeong has the iliohypogastric nerve distributed, and more importantly, there is a liver nearby that is vulnerable to shock.
The shock transmitted to the liver immediately leads to the lungs, causing breathing difficulties, and induces combat incapacitation regardless of will due to the intense shock.
It is not called a vital point for nothing.
“Kuuh!”
Indeed, a groan escaped from Verda’s mouth.
However, the moment Eloa tried to continue her attack, Verda’s hand grabbed her ankle.
She was only slightly frowning, not the reaction of someone who had been hit in a vital point.
“Wow, you’re much slower than me, but I couldn’t even see you. How did you do that?”
Her spine tingled.
Is this what it would feel like to be grabbed by a huge machine with a human body?
There was no sign that she could pull it out by force.
With a judgment close to instinct, she swung her sword while one foot was lifted.
Eloa, who had already reached the point of being one with her sword, was not bound by posture.
“I’m! Asking you a question!”
At that moment, Eloa’s body floated up.
Verda had swung Eloa around, using her ankle as a handle, as if she were swinging a sword.
Feeling a shock that made her consciousness fade, as if she had fallen from a high place with her bare body, Eloa thought.
Eloa, who mainly uses hand-to-hand combat.
Perhaps in response to that, Verda had prepared an overwhelming physique that could cause earthquakes just by stomping her feet.
It would be different if her body was in perfect condition, but Eloa is currently at a level where she cannot fully utilize her contracts.
Moreover, she had consumed a considerable amount of magical power in the previous battle, while Verda had made full preparations by offering countless sacrifices.
In other words, she was at a considerable disadvantage.
-Crack! Crack! Crack!
When Verda, who had been swinging Eloa around, released her hand, she was finally able to stop flying after passing through more than a dozen trees that were as tall as skyscrapers in the city center.
Eloa, who had been thrown away mercilessly, staggered and got up from her spot.
Her ankle was broken from that last impact.
A metallic taste rose from her throat.
“I was hoping you’d be a little less spirited by now…. Guess not.”
Verda sighed as she looked at Eloa’s eyes, which were still full of fighting spirit.
“Did you see just now? I let you go on purpose. Next time, I won’t let you go and I’ll swing you around until you die.”
In the world, Eloa was given the title of War God with respect and awe.
It was not a name given to her because Eloa had been slaughtering public enemies and homunculi with overwhelming martial prowess from the beginning.
If that were the case, there would have been a follow-up story that she was only fighting the weak in a cowardly manner.
Even the proud witches of Gehenna respected the name of the Tiferet Duchess because Eloa had been winning against numerous powerful enemies since before she had her current skills.
Among them, there were many witches and homunculi who were stronger than Eloa.
“That will be your biggest mistake.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t be boring and do something.”
Nevertheless, Eloa survived and achieved victory.
She had cut down so many powerful enemies that no one questioned the world’s assessment that she was the strongest among the 23rd tier.
“Then I will show you. The way I win.”
That’s right.
Eloa Tiferet was a witch who understood the path to victory better than anyone else.
